but starting with john mccain in 2008, i'm not suggesting john mccain was a racist, but john mccain had no association with black people whatsoever. pretty much like mitt romney this year. i know they always find some black people to trot out and say yes, this is somebody i know, but the fact of the matter is if you look at his career, you look at the aides that he had when he was a senator, all of the things in terms of his history and john mccain's family comes from mississippi, he had no association with black people whatsoever. when john mccain ran for the presidency in 2008, black people were not even on his radar. after president obama got elected, there was a belief -- and i would argue a not necessarily true belief among republicans that the african- american vote was no longer -- was basically off limits, that it was not possible to appeal to african-americans. that was a mistake. i believe that the rise of a lot of publicly expressed racist sentiments and the attitudes that go with them came from the fact that a lot of republicans all of a sudden decided that black people were